


Rumors

by Deifire



Category: NASCAR RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Gen, IN SPACE!, Language, Space Opera, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 12:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5497667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a galaxy devastated by the zombie plague, Captain Tony Stewart and his crew are just searching for a home. And a drink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rumors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [debirlfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/debirlfan/gifts).



_The origins of the plague were still unknown. Critics would later blame the slowness of government response for its rapid spread. By the time Galactic President Helton’s administration acknowledged the existence of the threat, it was no longer contained. The dead were rising on all known inhabited worlds. Humanity’s last hope for its continued existence lay in the hands of a few bands of survivors scattered throughout colonized space. These were humanity’s finest, their bravery, intelligence, and resourcefulness still celebrated today…_  
\--Smith and Venturini, _A Brief History of the Galactic Zombie Era_

***

_Many years earlier_

Kevin Harvick screamed like a six-year-old girl, Tony Stewart realized, as Kurt Busch accidentally bumped into Kevin from behind.

“Sorry!” Kurt said, then turned to fire at the nearest zombie, a shambling green-skinned monstrosity in what was left of a blue suit. Its name badge read McReynolds.

“Dammit, Kurt! I thought you were one of them!” Kevin spun and nearly lost his grip on the medical kit as he fired to take out a couple more of the undead. His blaster caught each of them between the eyes.

“I told you it was a bad idea to turn the artificial gravity back on!” yelled Danica Patrick, as she charged past them on her way to the ship. 

“It was easier for us to get around this way,” explained Kurt, for possibly the seventh time. “Besides, floating zombies are creepy.”

“Well, walking zombies aren’t exactly much less creepy,” said Danica. She stopped suddenly as her path was blocked by the corpse of a snarling blonde woman. Danica tossed the package she was carrying, spun, kicked the zombie in face, and caught the package again on the way back down. “But they are much more likely to kill us!”

“Less talking, more running!” ordered Tony. They were almost to the ship. Once everyone got back onboard the Porkchop, they could fly out of here, destroy the site from orbit, and cross Space Station FXS1 off the list of places still inhabited by the living. 

He rounded the corner to the landing bay, and stopped short. 

Three very bloated animated corpses dressed in the tatters of loud suits stood between him and the entrance to his starship. The one on the left looked awfully familiar…

“Captain, hit the deck!” came a voice from behind him. 

As Tony dropped to the ground and covered his head, he heard the sound of Kurt’s hand-held disruptor canon powering up as Danica called, “No, Kurt! Wait!”

There was a flash of light and the sound of a wet sort of explosion.

And Captain Tony Stewart cursed the day he ever met this crew as zombie guts rained down on his head.

***

One sonic shower later, Tony made his way to the bridge of the Starship Porkchop.

Down the corridor, he could hear the sound of somebody belching the alphabet, followed by a smattering of applause. He nodded proudly. He’d taught his security officer everything she knew.

This was followed by the sound of another belch, in a lower key, that only made it up to the letter Q. This time Tony shook his head. The lessons hadn’t quite taken as well with Kevin.

“What’s the situation?” he asked his crew as he entered the bridge and took his seat in the captain’s chair.

“Belching contest. Danica’s ahead by—“ Kurt began.

“I meant with the mission,” Tony said.

“Well, we got a couple of med kits and what was left of their food supply. We’ve got protein bars, Twinkies, and that energy drink Kurt likes,” said Danica.

“I thought they’d stopped making that,” Tony said.

“Hey, it was still legal on at least three worlds when the plague hit,” Kurt said.

“Yeah, well if he drinks too much, starts vibrating, and pukes all over my bridge again, somebody else is cleaning it up,” Tony said.

“Not it!” Kevin and Danica said, nearly simultaneously, Danica just the slightest bit slower.

“Dammit!” she said.

“We also got a four-month supply of MREs. All beef stroganoff flavor,” said Kevin.

“All beef stroganoff? Not even a single pork rib?” Tony asked. Then, off Danica’s look, “What?”

“You’ve got a weird thing for pork products for someone who named his ship after his pet pig,” she observed.

“Yeah, well. He was a good friend, but a member of a delicious species,” Tony said. Danica made a face. 

The truth was, the original Porkchop had lived a good, long life, which had, fortunately, come to its natural end well before the zombie outbreak hit. It turned out pigs were as susceptible as humans to whatever virus, chemical agent, or—if the craziest of conspiracy theorists turned out to be correct and there was any such thing—alien technology was causing the dead to rise. So were cows. The supply of decent food in the galaxy was dwindling quickly.

“I miss bacon,” Tony said.

“I miss beer,” said Kevin. 

Tony turned to his first officer, “I take it the ‘find alcoholic beverages’ part of the mission was a failure.”

Kevin nodded. “As was our secondary priority. The station computer’s data banks were wiped clean.”

Tony shook his head. “That’s too bad. Because I think one of the guys I just finished washing out of my hair was our contact.”

“I am really sorry about that, Captain,” said Kurt.

“Hey, you just ruined a perfectly good evening dress, that’s all,” said Tony.

“Captain, I’m still not sure why anything in this mission required you to dress up as a woman,” said Danica.

“I told you, it was a covert operation. I was in disguise as a reasonable security precaution.” Tony ignored the look his three crew members exchanged. “I wasn’t expecting the whole station to be zombified by the time we got there. Or that we wouldn’t get to meet up with the mysterious D.W. while he was still alive and learn what he knew.”

“It was probably bullshit anyway,” said Kurt.

And Tony couldn’t fault him for thinking that. The man calling himself D.W. a.k.a. “Jaws” was just the latest in a series of contacts who had hinted at, but ultimately failed to deliver, information on the location of a secret habitable planet where research was being done on a potential cure for the worst plague to ever strike the human race. Not that becoming a zombie wasn’t a pretty good excuse.

“So where to now?” Kevin asked.

“Our next contact. A freighter captain by the name of Bowyer. He’s meeting us at the Bristol Outpost.”

“The Bristol Outpost? But Captain…um…” Kevin began.

The incident that “um” referred to involved the four of them, a particularly energetic bar fight, and the phrase “banned for life.” Tony waved a hand dismissively. “That happened way before the apocalypse. I’m sure nobody even remembers it now. Besides, we can always go in disguise.”

He pretended to ignore the way his three crew members groaned.

“So we’re trading for rumors again?” Kurt asked. 

Tony gave him a look. “There a problem with that?”

“It’s just that the fucking…” Kurt began, in a tone that signaled he was about to go off on an epic rant. He suddenly seemed to realize who he was talking to, took a deep breath, and continued. “It’s just that the zombie outbreak has pretty much wiped out all our regular trading partners. I’m not sure we should be throwing supplies away on information about a planet that may or may not even exist. There may be no such place as Talladega.”

“Or there is, and it’s just as infected as every other planet,” Danica said. “It could be zombie-town by the time we get there.”

“You could be right,” Tony admitted. “Still, if there’s any hope at all, I think it’s worth pursuing. Besides, that’s not the only thing we’re trading for.”

“It’s not?” asked Kurt.

“Did I not mention this Captain Bowyer has a freighter full of whiskey?”

Tony watched the expressions on his crew’s faces change. A home and a cure were distant possibilities, but the more immediate prospect of booze was something else.

An alert signal interrupted his thoughts.

“Captain,” Danica began.

Off to the starboard side, there was a flash as another starship dropped out of hyperspace. Someone had locked on to their position while they'd been debating. A Fusion, Tony noted. Popular rich kid’s toy, before the apocalypse. Smaller than the Impala-class Porkchop. He saw that this Fusion had been rigged out with at least two disruptor cannons and a quantum torpedo launcher. Damned space pirates, he thought.

“This is Captain Stewart to the unknown…” he began to hail before he was interrupted.

“This is Commander Kesolowski of the Starship Sliced Bread, prepare to be…” 

There was the sound of a scuffle and then a different voice came over the transmission. “I’m doing it, Brad!” the second voice said.

“But I’m the communications officer! I called it, remember?” said the first voice.

“I don’t care! It’s my ship. I make the threats,” the second voice responded. And then, seemingly addressing the rest of them again, “This is Captain Logano of the Starship Sliced Bread. Prepare to be boarded!”

Tony didn’t have to say a word. He gave Danica a single look.

She opened fire.

“Oh, shit!” he heard Captain Logano say. 

The Sliced Bread started to take off through the debris field from the newly-destroyed space station.

“Kurt,” Tony said.

“On it!” Kurt replied. He gave chase, dodging fire from the other ship, as Danica continued to fire back at them. She hit the Sliced Bread head on with a photon torpedo, and Tony could see debris shaking loose from the port side as the smaller craft’s shields started to falter. 

Suddenly, the other ship appeared to elongate momentarily before disappearing in a flash. Somebody aboard had activated the hyperdrive.

“Should I go after them?” Kurt asked.

Tony considered. It would fun, and they probably wouldn’t be that hard to capture. The Sliced Bread was well on its way to becoming the Burnt Toast. Still…

“Given that stunning display of competence, do you really think they’ve managed to steal anything from anybody that would be worth tracking them down?” Kevin asked, giving voice to Tony’s thoughts.

“And remember, whiskey,” Tony reminded everybody.

“So, let’s go to Bristol then?” asked Kurt.

Tony nodded. “Let’s go to Bristol.”

“I was hoping for a real challenge,” said Danica, as Kurt plotted their new course. “Maybe the Darksiders.”

“Darksiders?” Tony asked.

“Actual effective space pirates,” Kevin said. “Rumor is they leave no survivors. Also, that one of them is a ninja assassin with a cloaking device.”

Kurt shuddered. “I dated a ninja assassin once,” he said, off everyone’s looks. “It didn’t end well. And Darksiders are real.”

“Now, how come you’ll believe that crazy rumor, but you don’t believe in Talladega?”

“Because, no offense, Captain, it’s usually the crazy rumors that could kill us that wind up being true,” Kurt said. “Besides, my brother went looking for them once, and never came back.”

Huh. Tony hadn’t realized Kurt had a brother. Come to think of it, there was a lot about his crew he didn’t know. He knew that Kurt used to be known as the Outlaw, and had been fired from a couple of crews before joining up with Tony, but not much else. He knew that Danica came from somewhere in the Irl System, but that was about it, as far as her past was concerned. Hell, he knew all sorts of stuff about Kevin, including his greatest weakness (blondes), his favorite color (yellow), and how many tacos he could eat before experiencing serious gastrointestinal distress (thirteen), but they didn’t really talk about things like family and planet of origin.

“All that proves is your whole family believes in crazy things,” Danica was saying. “Like, for example, your belief that you could beat me in a belching content.”

“We weren’t actually finished with that,” Kurt noted, as the Porkchop made the jump to hyperspace.

“Yeah, but she was beating the pants off you,” Kevin pointed out.

“Hey can anybody get in on this game?” Tony said. 

He smiled and cleared his throat as they nodded. By the time they made it to Bristol, everyone on the bridge would find out once again that nobody, but _nobody_ could out-belch the captain.

He only hoped Bristol would still be there when they arrived.


End file.
